#[ greed why ]

[inkskinned]

nobody ever gets the mugshot of gluttony right. these days you think it has nothing to do with bodyweight. what a good trick: that gluttony could take a shape. no, there was never any fault in finishing a meal or in taking second helpings. it was always in taking from others that there was an issue - the oil baron's fingers steepled over dead bodies and stolen lands. gluttony - twin of greed, although most think greed and envy are the siblings - gluttony is pleased with the experience of gaining, is thrilled just-by-having. greed is the one that stays hungry, that has to move forever like a shark. gluttony likes it - "a glutton for punishment" is one who is seeking the harm, who loves the rush.

gluttony is a mother using her daughter's body for a diet testing ground, sharpening the bone angles. gluttony is saying why, well not! to the seventh and eighth mansion or yacht. it is not just wanting the six white horses, it is making sure that the horses came from your stables. it is not just bathing in milk - it is bathing in milk while others are starving.

oh, it's true that some sins still blaze in their bright floral prints. wrath in a white woman yelling at a person of color for even daring to be in her neighborhood. the red, incipient rage of a neck tightened at even the thought we would take the guns away. wrath has laurels, and she is good at her job, and works hard.

but sloth wasn't ever the sleepy morning of depression, the hours spent begging a clouded body to please move goddamn it; the protestant work ethic claiming even rest is somehow demonic. it was never chronic fatigue. sloth was subtle, a grey mist. she is watching you get bullied and she is deciding it is none of her business. she crosses the picket line because - what! it's just chicken, isn't it? she is closing her eyes and turning her head when the next anti-gay legislation passes. someone else will handle it. not the tense freeze of anxiety or a lack of preparation - she knows you're hurting and would rather you stay quiet about it. she tells other people i just don't see what the big deal is.

sloth is a father that doesn't do the dishes. sloth is your boyfriend's innocent shrug you're just better at household shit. sloth isn't the missed opportunity - it is the purposeful desire to just get-someone-else-to-do-it.

greed and envy are doing body shots in the back of a private jet. they are the way they always have been, but are lovers in the age of the internet. greed just finished union busting, is rolling a bitcoin over his knuckles, is about to start another MLM. envy is in a broadbrimmed hat, showing off her instagram life, grinning about how if you want it, work for it.

okay, it's true. you have a soft spot for lust, gathering dust in a corner. so tame in comparison to the others. but how funny lust is always painted as being a woman in tight clothes. you've met actually lustful women - the ones that purposefully climb into your partner's lap, the ones that say lesbians are gross but ask bisexual women into bed with their husbands. a lustful woman is not donned in lace and garters and red: that's how men think lust looks, painting their own sins into frame. this way, the sin displaces as fog and hovers above her: a woman in a dress is lust; what the man experiences is just the natural consequence.

here is the thing: lust is doing just fine, save your pity. lust is running more circles than any of them. lust is shutting down safe sexwork sites while also making teenagers in knee-high socks sex sensations. lust is CEO of an advertising network where women never pass 25 years old. all the bras lust makes are pretty to look at but, when worn, legitimately hurt. lust has a podcast, his fur coat looped around his shoulders, sells the idea that only certain people have value, that sex raises some and destroys others. lust is tilting his head and asking what did you expect when you dress like that? lust shuns you, sneers that everything you want is disgusting and taboo - right until he can figure out how to capitalize off of it. lust has the midas ability: everything he touches becomes an object.

people usually say wrath is the scary one. you agree with FMA here, though: the real dangerous one is pride, and the shit-eating grin. the white cloaks and the nationalism and the inability to apologize. it is every partner who threw a book at your head because you don't respect him. it is every mother who said my son doesn't deserve to have his life ruined over allegations. it is the teacher that fails you because you talked back.

you worry you have this one. you feel guilty when you need help but don't ask for it. prideful. ashamed when you complete something and feel good about it. too proud for your own good. but pride is not the reward of hard work or accomplishment: pride is a twitter feed. it is the thing that has to mask i didn't do anything with look at me.

pride is your father's raised hand, his raised voice. how he was never there when you needed him, but he is still "head of house." he ruins dinner and blames it on you: you're an embarrassment to this family. this is the glass you walk around, the cuts in your feet. how he says this isn't how i raised you and you have to bite back the retort: that's because you didn't actually fucking raise me.

[cowboyfatgum]

MC: *accidentally bumping into mammon and putting on a British accent* My fault original gangster

Mammon *also putting on a British accent* No, this cannot be forgiven, now empty the compartments of your pantaloons

MC: For what purpose?🥺

Mammon: And discard all of your footwear as well

MC: For what purpose?😭😭😭

[doodoobug3000]

Are you enjoying your journey, "hero"?

[humming-fly]

I only just now realized what a shame it is we never got to see Al and Greedling really interacting

[beanghostprincess]

Okay, so I haven't watched all of FMAB yet, but I love how Ed is so fucking oblivious. He got a gorgeous girl, way smarter than him and out of everybody's league, who plays with the cord of the telephone when they speak together because she's down bad and laughs softly when he talks. And he's like "yeah, yeah, well, I am glad you're alive haha I thought they were going to brutally fucking murder you today. So that's a relief. Bye, super best friend in the world" and hangs up like the moron he is. But not only that, because well, they can't see each other so I get he doesn't notice the crush in Winry's voice, BUT LING?????? Dude has been with that prince inside a guy's stomach and has carried him around and cooked him his boot and yelled at him for giving up because he can't leave somebody as ambitious as him there without accomplishing what he wants, and then he says some gay bullshit like "Ling is still in there" after looking at Greed's eyes ONCE. One thing is not realizing a girl is crushing on you but Oh my God Edward for fuck's sake get a clue and realize you like men-

[marosii]

Had a dream about bald meruem

[goldkirk]

I don’t know how to explain any more clearly that it doesn’t MATTER if it seems legitimate to you. You have got to fact check every single headline and post and claim on the left just like you need to do on the right.

The left is NOT immune to misinformation and rushed reporting. And the more emotionally polarizing or shocking the talking points, sound bytes, and headlines are, the worse it is and more frequently it happens.

Learn to verify through multiple independent sources. If you can’t do that, you can’t trust it.

If you have to wait extra hours for the real information to come through vetted channels—NOT just one individual somewhere everyone links to, and not just one single media source either, EVEN if it’s a major news network—thats just how it has to be. What news outside of genuine local disasters near you TRULY needs your outrage and post-sharing in the next hour specifically?

Misinformation works best by not seeming like misinformation and by fitting in with the rest of what you already expect to see. It doesn’t help anyone to not be able to recognize and avoid the stuff.

[twigsyy]

proto-bouffant for all you. enjoyers.

[clonerightsagenda]

If you take Ling's blood sugar crashes seriously from a medical perspective and rule out medications I'm not sure existed yet and major organ failure, my best guess at a diagnosis would be an insulinoma, a usually benign pancreatic tumor that overproduces insulin and messed up your levels. Thus I propose the reason he stopped passing out partway through the story is that Greed went "hey what the fuck is this" and ripped it out.

[kiwizoom]

AKA How do Gons get made?

[superiorcake]

There is an obscene amount of booty in the Chimera Ant Arc. Like half the ants are rocking a g-string for unknown reasons.

Greed Island server prompt for Poor Man's Rose challenge. Theme: overconfidence.

[danieyells]

Taiga's mental deterioration is awful. It's terrible. To lose parts of oneself, for Romeo to lose parts of someone he loves so dearly, it's painful and terrifying and if he could make a wish with another demon he might just wish for him to be healed. He was never normal in the time that he knew him. But once upon a time Taiga spoke and looked around the world with coherency, Taiga took interest in things beyond hunger and sporadic, violent fascination. Once upon a time Taiga did more than eat and gamble and sleep in a cycle that he sometimes was very aware of.

And yet.

And yet one of the things Taiga never seemed to forget was Romeo himself. Others' faces and names faded away or never told hold to begin with, other parts of his life were gone to the neverending hunger within him, but Lulu, Lulu remained. If Taiga heard Romeo's name, even without his nickname, there was never any question who he was. His face was always as beautiful as he last saw him. His voice was always so loud and he always said too much. He was as naïve as the day they met and as greedy as he'd ever been. Taiga knew Romeo. He always knew Romeo.

It was awful, in his eyes. That whoever Taiga has been before he met him had been washed away. That Taiga could barely remember who he was and where he'd come from and what brought him joy beyond risk and profit and blood in his mouth and the presence of someone who'd stayed with him so long that Romeo used to wonder if no one had ever done so before.

And yet.

Romeo had always been a greedy bastard. No one knew that like Taiga did.

And as much as he hated to see Taiga fade into something almost beastial, the part of him he buried down tight, the part of him which would have rather cling to valuables even if they would get him killed, the vicious, hungering greed watched on with delight.

The greed held its hand out to this slowly forming monster to be sniffed and remembered and relied on and loved and wanted and needed and to be the only thing left in his head.

Part of him saw Taiga forget everything but remember him with such clarity it was as if Romeo's existence was his own and wished he could help him tear everything else away. Faster, forget faster. Forget more. Care about less.

Until all that Taiga knew or saw or desired or remembered or lived for what Romeo Scorpius Lucci.

Isn't it what he deserved? And isn't it what would make Taiga happy, too?

It was inevitable, as he saw it.

It was inevitable, as Taiga had told him he would never, ever forget him.

If Taiga ever forgot Romeo, what would be left would simply not be Taiga, and Romeo should take it out.

Perhaps Taiga had meant it as a warning, for fear that he would harm Romeo if he ever forgot his face. He had trained him to be able to hold a gun to him, to be ready to pull the trigger in case there was no recognition in Taiga's eyes and he bore teeth at him. To shoot for his heart. To think he should protect himself from whatever took over and used Taiga's face to threaten Romeo's wellbeing.

But to Romeo it was something more. Not about what would become of Taiga but who he was now.

Romeo mourned every memory and thought Taiga lost. Even if Taiga didn't care to do so, every lost bit of someone he loved so dearly was worth mourning.

And yet he watched. Closely. What was left. How much was left. How much was him--and how much was not--and how much would still be him in the end.

Someday, perhaps, if they could not reverse what had become of Taiga's mind, all that would be left for him would be Romeo. And perhaps to continue to love him and to hold him would be to take advantage of that.

But Romeo had killed and stolen and manipulated and more. He was not a man of morals, but of profits and a great deal of sickening, clawing love in the form of greed.

Perhaps someday Taiga would become empty of anything but Romeo, and Romeo would hold him and care for him and love him regardless, in spite of it, for it. Why shouldn't he love someone who thought only of him and felt only for him, whose heart beat and mind buzzed and body moved for him and nothing else? Even if Taiga's sense of self eroded, if his sense of Romeo remained what was not to be loved?

Perhaps after that he would begin to forget Romeo as well. And until then Romeo would love him and use him. Until then he was still valuable. Until then he was still Taiga.

Until he was no longer Taiga, who lived for Romeo according to the greed that made his love into a room full of gilded cages, Romeo would keep him for himself.

And the moment he stopped being Taiga would be when Romeo's heart truly broke.

And what choice would he have, before he lost more attachment to the one person who would attached to nothing but him, to use the gift he'd been given?

That attachment would be so strong, that love so intense, that there wouldn't be blood or gore or anything at all.

There wouldn't even be a world left to mourn Taiga or Romeo or to suffer an existence without them. That love, that passion, would be enough to end everything there ever was or would be in this world. Or maybe that was just Romeo's delightful fantasy, that the world would be reduced to rubble shooting off in a million brilliant directions in space because he simply loved one idiot too much.

One idiot who loved him too much.

If not for him. None of this would have ever happened. He followed Taiga to Darkwick and if he had any direction when they left he would follow him in that direction too.

And if Taiga died, who would he be if he didn't go with him?

And Romeo, in all of his greed, would simply have to take everything with them.

Everything.

[metamatronic]

Please PLEASE tell me we do get a reunion between Greed and Ling?? I'm sobbing just thinking about it!!

first / prev

the boys get to hug. as a treat.

also listen. we all know lan fan could easily take barry in a fight, but we’re suspending disbelief for content, alright?

[humming-fly]

I didn't take my tablet home with me for the holidays BUT I do have this fun little holiday art trade I did with @too-many-blorbos that I figured I'd lovingly share in the interim~!

Hope those of you that celebrate are having a Merry Christmas and those that aren't are having a wonderful December day!

[clearbun]

THEY CENSORED HIM??

[marosii]